Spain Miners’ Three-Week Trek Against Cuts Reaches Madrid

Menendez, who usually spends his days 700 meters below
ground, arrived in Madrid with about 160 fellow miners after
trudging 285 miles (460 kilometers) under the blazing summer sun
from the northern region of Asturias. They are protesting
Rajoy’s cuts to subsidies that equated to more than 290,000
euros ($356,000) per miner last year. Union leaders aimed to
draw more than 100,000 protesters to a rally in the capital.

The demonstration tests Rajoy’s attempt to maintain order
as he pushes through the most severe budget cuts since the
country returned to democracy 35 years ago. The run-up to the
demonstration has been marked by violent clashes between armored
police and masked pickets who blocked highways and railroads in
northern Spain and shot fireworks and golf balls from improvised
launchers made from metal pipes.

“The miners will start to matter to investors if the
protests turn violent and they block the ability of government
to continue implementing reforms,” Antonio Barroso, a political
analyst at Eurasia Group in London, said in a July 9 telephone
interview. “The government can’t afford a huge protest that
shuts down the country.”

Yield Spread

The extra yield investors demand to hold Spanish 10-year
bonds instead of benchmark German bunds slid to 546 basis points
at 11 a.m. in Madrid today. It reached a euro-era record of 589
basis points on June 18. Rajoy addressed the Spanish parliament
today, setting out 65 billion euros of additional budget cuts to
meet deficit goals as revenue slumps.

Miners from the mountainous region of Asturias on Spain’s
north coast have played a key role in political unrest since
before the civil war. General Francisco Franco, who went on to
rule Spain from 1939, put down a 1934 uprising by bombing mining
communities from the air and faced additional strikes over the
course of his 36-year regime.

“The first uprisings were always in the mining counties,”
said Menendez, 53, who hails from a family of Asturian miners
going back at least five generations. “We were in the vanguard
for the protests of the whole society and history is repeating
itself today.”

Former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, from
Leon, another northern mining area, last year budgeted 1.2
billion euros of aid for the coal industry, the most-polluting
energy source, even as he touted Spain as a leader in low-carbon
power. Zapatero has committed Spaniards to paying over 100
billion euros in subsidies for renewable energy.

Long March

For the past three weeks, the marchers have snaked along
the edge of highways from the northern regions of Asturias and
Leon, raising clenched fists to salute truckers that hoot their
support and camping in sports halls opened up by friendly
mayors. On their helmets, supporters scrawled messages of good
luck and they’ve taped photos of their kids. By early July, some
were hobbling as villagers turned out to cheer them.

“We’re here to look after our Spaniards,” said Julia
Alonso, a Red Cross worker from Avila province who gave pain-
killing injections to some before the start of the July 6 leg.

The police forces waiting for them in Madrid aren’t as
welcoming. They are prepared for violence even as they aim to
contain protestors peacefully, according to an interior ministry
official who declined to give details of police numbers for
security reasons.

Improvised Artillery

When the miners last gathered in Madrid in May, police
charged demonstrators with batons and fired rubber balls into
the crowd after a protester shot a firework at the Industry
Ministry using a home-made rocket launcher, union organizer Jose
Luis Fernandez Roces said as he rested in the shade following a
24-kilometer leg on July 5. Last week, a golf ball fired from a
similar weapon pierced the armor of a police van during a clash
with authorities in northern Spain, he added.

The police will have enough officers in reserve to control
the protesters should they try to storm the parliament building
where lawmakers are meeting today, the official said. Protesters
in the north, who cover their faces to conceal their identities,
have fired home-made missiles at a police helicopter, he added.

“The mining industry is traditionally very combative
because the work itself is very tough,” Justo Rodriguez Braga,
general secretary of the Union General de Trabajadores in
Asturias said in a July 6 interview on the highway near Segovia.
“While the workers are peaceful, we are concerned the situation
could lead to violence and social instability.”

Fighting Rajoy

Today’s demonstration has taken on a wider significance for
the miners, who usually retire in their early 40s under an
industry-wide labor agreement funded by the state. They see
their campaign as part of a wider battle to protect workers and
the unemployed as Rajoy cuts spending to try to hit his budget-
deficit target and prop up the banking industry.

“The government wants to destroy the country’s most
powerful union movement,” Roces said. “They say they are
cutting aid because of the crisis but then they find 100 billion
euros for the banks. We are talking about 200 million euros.”

Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria, the object of abusive
chants from the marchers, cut the aid budget for the mining
industry 44 percent this year to 656 million euros. That
includes 193 million euros to compensate companies whose
production costs exceed the market price of coal.

Miners’ leaders say Soria is distorting those numbers
because they include payments that come from the 2011 budget.
Aid to companies in this year’s budget was cut to 111 million
euros from 301 million euros in 2011, according to the
Comisiones Obreras union. The subsidy cuts are steep enough to
drive most mine operators out of business, Rodriguez Braga said.

“We aren’t fighting for an extra week’s holiday or a 2
percent pay rise, we’re fighting to keep an industry alive,” he
said. “I’m expecting a massive turnout from the people.”